“When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.” 

– Donald Miller 

“Don’t choose the one who is beautiful to the world; choose the one who makes your world beautiful.” 

– Harry Styles 

“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” 

– Sam Keen 

Let me begin this chapter by saying right up front that your first foray into the dating scene will not likely result in you finding the true love of your life. Hence, the saying, “You may have to kiss a few frogs before you find your prince.”  

I’ve helped countless people establish a relationship, and in these numerous attempts at helping them to find true love, rarely have I found a person who found their soul mate on the first try. Normally, finding a compatible partner requires a multi-step approach. Ultimately, in order to finding a compatible partner, people first had to endure one failed attempt at love after another. But the ones who stuck it out were usually handsomely rewarded for their efforts. These love seekers ended up not only learning about the process, but ended up with a compatible romantic partner.  

I think that this long quote by John Michelson sums up the gist of this chapter when he writes: 

“Finding true love and building a relationship that lasts a lifetime can be one of the most rewarding experiences there is. Having a partner you can share the rest of your life with is something we all dream of. “

However, finding that person can be a challenging roller coaster ride. Both sexes (men and women) are often dealing with many issues they have to face within themselves as well as the other person they meet. 

All too often, many people give up on the idea of finding love because it feels like a lot of work and give up hope. But the truth is, to create anything worthwhile in life will always take some form of effort, which is why it’s important people remember that it is worth it as long as you stay positive. 

Many people who venture into the dating scene start out with high hopes and a great sense of optimism that they are taking a step in the right direction toward finding true love. Unfortunately, more often than not, such is not the case. The problem is that too many people have unrealistic expectations about what to expect in a relationship. I like to call today’s relationship expectations: finding love through romance novels and social media memes. 

In today’s “microwave” society, people have come to expect instant results. Most of us hate to wait for anything. Just think about how you feel when surfing the Internet. If a page takes too long to load, you will likely want to quickly navigate to another page that you feel may load faster. The media has also taught us to think this way. For example, on a television show, the entire problem is laid out, dealt with and solved in the span of either a half hour or an hour’s time. So now people have come to expect that real life is somehow supposed to function in the same way.  

The most common mistake I saw people make in their pursuit of love was to expect too much from the process. Although these people had begun the process with high hopes, they soon learned that they only had so much control over the process than they had initially believed.  

In general, the people who initially had high expectations for their dating experience had often get their definitions of what constitutes love and relationships first from romantic storybooks from their childhood. Then, as they grow up, they received some unrealistic definitions of love and romance from the media; including the now ubiquitous social media. What these types failed to realize was that in real life, romance isn’t all kissing, candy and flowers. There were equal parts finances, illness and problems with in-laws.  

After a number of relationship let-downs, the people I helped learned that let-downs were the norm rather than the exception. Almost no one finds love on their first pursuit for it. In other words, true love isn’t something akin to a mail-order bride. It wasn’t something ready-made that someone could order from a catalogue.  

The way this process worked was that the person first found, and then dated, someone they initially felt was a viable candidate for a relationship. Yet, most of these early relationship contenders would ultimately turn out to be duds. That is, in the long run, they weren’t truly compatible with the person I was assisting. But after a few forays into the dating scene, the people I helped would learn, from trial and error, what it took to find a compatible romantic partner. The bottom line was that it took was a willingness to compromise.  

Once a person learned that they weren’t going to instantly find a partner that met all their expectations, and that they would ultimately have to compromise on this issue, they then had to learn how to calibrate their level of compromise. Not everything is amenable to compromise. Some things are absolute deal breakers. The key was to find out how to tell the difference between what one was willing to compromise about versus what was an absolute deal breaker. The solution was inevitably somewhere in between those two extremes.  

Once these love-seekers properly calibrated their love expectations and learned to compromise about what they could realistically expect from a relationship, it was then that they started to see more positive results than negative ones. Once this lesson was learned and implemented, the majority of these love-seekers started finding the love that they had been seeking all along.  

By experiencing some fits and starts, the main lesson these love-seekers learned was not to have such unrealistic expectations about what it took to achieve a successful relationship before they had actually met their contenders. These triumphant love-seekers learned to reverse the process. They learned to develop their expectations after they had me their romantic partner.  

Many people seeking love had begun their quest for love with a “shopping list” of qualities they wanted in a partner. The successful love-seekers learned that such a list actually ended up hindering their pursuit of love. They realized that the “shopping list” approach just wasn’t the way to proceed with their search to find love, and they quickly learned to adjust their strategy.  

Once the love-seekers gave their suitors a fair and reasonable chance to interact with them, they then chose from the potential partner’s by how much they enjoyed interacting with them. Additionally, I wouldn’t say that these successful love-seekers had completely abandoned their search for an attractive partner. However, I am saying that they merely stopped making it the starting point of their quest for establishing a relationship.   

The successful love-seekers turned the process on its head by learning to add good things about their prospective lovers to their lists rather than rely on pre-planned lists. The people who were most likely to find a partner were the ones who grew their list as they went. In other words, the successful love-seekers looked for positive aspects of their prospective partners to emphasize rather than look for reason to quit them.  

I did find that the more physically attractive the person was, the more likely they were to hold on to their idea of a pre-planned list. These types had become accustomed to being picky about who they would date and eventually marry. And for some time during their younger years, they had people approaching them; asking them to form a relationship. So they had become used to to this being the norm in their lives. Yet, eventually, these good-looking types saw the wisdom of building their list of what they wanted in a partner as an after-thought. It may have taken them some additional time to come to this realization, but when they did, things in the romanced department worked out for the better.  

The main reason these good-looking people took longer to get a clue about compromising their expectations about what it took to establish a successful relationship was the fact that they could be picky in their quest for love. Ultimately, these good-looking types learned that most of their suitors wanted them for their suitor’s agenda than for an agenda of a partnership of love.  

The bottom line is that these good-looking types had learned that they could get people to do “stuff” for them. And thus, they learned that they had some control over what they could expect from people. In the long run, these “beautiful people” wanted to continue to use their good-looks to better their chances at finding true love.  

Another subgroup of love-seekers started out their quests for love by looking for something wrong with their suitors. Rather than looking of something they had in common with their love prospects, these types looked for any reason to ditch their suitor and then move on to the next prospect. More people follow this model than most realize. However, it’s more of a defense mechanism against getting their heart broken than it is a paradigm for finding true love.  

On the other hand, the successful love-seekers began to look for things that the couple had in common rather than looking for any minuscule flaw as a reason to call off the courting process. The successful types began to look for things they had in common with their suitors. Thus, they looked for things that they could build on to form a solid foundation instead of looking for a reason to call off the relationship.  

The people who continued to be unsuccessful at relationships were the ones who continued to abide by the logic of the flawed paradigm that had good-looking people being able to command the love and respect of prospectful suitors based solely on their physical attractiveness. And rather than realize that such a paradigm itself was flawed, the better-looking types continued to follow the logic of a flawed paradigm than admit that such a paradigm itself may be the culprit to blame for their failed relationships. Rather than change their paradigm, they just put more effort into the logic of their flawed paradigm.  

One of the first things the successful love-seekers discovered was that in order to find a truly compatible partner; they didn’t necessarily need to start out their hunt for true love by judging a book by its cover. In other words, the triumphant love-seekers first had to abandon the idea that they needed to begin their quest to find true love by sorting their potential partners by how physically attractive they were. In the end, these winning love-seekers dropped the idea that they would only choose to get to know potential mates who appealed mainly to their eyes.  

One thing many people failed to realize was that in a relationship, each of the partners does “grow.” But there are two possibilities of growth that we need to consider. A prospective couple can grow, but can also grow together. These types grow in tandem with one another and grow into a beautifully strong relationship.  

The other types of relationships “grew” in opposite directions and ended up growing apart. In other words, a couple can either grow together, or they can grow apart. There is no way to know which direction they will grow with one another beforehand. This is something they will have to realize as they interact with one another. There is simply no other way to know beforehand which direction they will go.  

Keep mind what I said at the very beginning of this book. I told you how more than 50% of marriages failed. Thus, it just seems as though failed relationships are something we will have to accept as a fact of life. But what you don’t have to accept is that your own personal relationship will have to be doomed like more than half of all the other relationships. By learning how relationships evolve and function, you can increase the chances that your relationship will beat the odds and end up being something special. There is simply no other way to say it: you may have to kiss a few frogs before you find a prince.